College Students Value Self-Esteem Over Sex

Below:

Next story in Science

Sex, favorite foods, alcohol, a visit with a best friend and a
paycheck – a self-esteem boost trumps them all for most college
students, according to two new studies that asked students to
rate the pleasant activities they most desired.

"These are college students, look at this list of activities,"
said Brad Bushman, lead study researcher and a professor of
communication and psychology at The Ohio State University.

"College
students love sex, they love to eat — any place there is free
food, they are there," Bushman told LiveScience, continuing
through the list. "And yet they love self-esteem more."

When the results of the two studies were broken down by gender,
however, self-esteem
didn't trump everything. Male students preferred it to all other
activities, but among women, self-esteem boosts, such as those
linked with getting a good grade or a compliment, rated
neck-and-neck with money and friends.

In the first study, Bushman's team asked 130 University of
Michigan students, who received course credit, to think about
their favorite food, sexual activity and self-esteem building
experiences. Then they had to rate on a scale from 1 to 5 how
much they liked it – "How pleasant would it be to eat it (food),
do it (sex), or have that experience (self-esteem)?" – and how
much they wanted it – "How much do you want to eat it (food), do
it (sex), or have that experience (self-esteem)?"

In the second study, the 152 students rated how much they wanted
and liked the same pleasurable experiences described in the first
study as well as receiving a paycheck, seeing a best friend and
drinking alcohol.

Overall, the participants liked all the activities more than they
wanted, or needed, them, which is healthy, the researchers said.
But the difference between liking and wanting was the smallest
for self-esteem building experiences. This is significant,
because addiction
research suggests that addicts tend to "want" the object of their
addiction more than they actually "like" it, according to
Bushman.

"Notice for self-esteem the gap is the smallest, so if people are
addicted to anything, they are addicted to self-esteem," he said,
cautioning that the study results don't indicate any kind of
addiction.

As part of the first study, participants took a test they were
told measured intelligence. Afterward, they were told that if
they waited an additional 10 minutes, they could have the test
rescored and possibly improve their score. The researchers found
that the greater the gap in favor of wanting a self-esteem boost
versus liking it, the more likely a student was to wait.

Americans have come to think of boosting self-esteem as a
solution to many societal problems, such as
teen pregnancy and drug abuse, according to Bushman.

"But I think that is backwards," he said. "Good performance has
to come before, not after, self-esteem."

There are also behavioral implications.

"The problem isn't with having high self-esteem; it's how much
people are driven to boost their self-esteem," said study
researcher Jennifer Crocker, a psychology professor at The Ohio
State University. "When people highly value self-esteem, they may
avoid doing things such as acknowledging a wrong they did.
Admitting you were wrong may be uncomfortable for self-esteem at
the moment, but ultimately, it could lead to better learning,
relationships, growth and even future self-esteem."

Both studies are published online in the Journal of Personality
and will appear in a forthcoming print issue.